After weeks of For Your Consideration events and nonstop campaigning from studios, voting for the 2026 Primetime Emmy Awards nominations is officially underway — and the race for this year’s Primetime Emmys is running with a smaller pack.
Television Academy members opened their nominating ballots to 555 program submissions across the 14 program categories this year, down from 600 last year — a decline of 45 titles, or about 7.5%.
Each member of the Television Academy — nearly 24,000 industry professionals divided among 31 peer groups, including directors, producers and artisans — votes within their professional field, but all eligible voters may cast ballots in the 14 top program races. That includes outstanding comedy, drama, limited or anthology series, television movie, variety series, variety special (live), variety special (pre-recorded), short form (comedy/drama/variety), short form (nonfiction/reality), hosted nonfiction series, structured reality, unstructured reality, reality competition and game show.
According to Academy rules, the number of nominees in each category is determined by the volume of submissions. However, the drama and comedy series categories are guaranteed to have eight nominees each, regardless of the total number of entries.
